Soviet Nuclear-powered Icebreaker Arktika Reaches North Pole

17 August 1977

On August 17, 1977 for the first time in the history of navigation, a surface ship, the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika reached in active navigation the geographical point of North Pole.

Nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika was built in 1971–1972 at Baltic plant and launched on December 26, 1972. According to its technical characteristics it was the largest icebreaker of the time: its length was 148 m, width – 30 m, height of side – over 17 m, draught – 11 m. Icebreaker’s displacement was 23 000 tons; power of its turbines equaled to 75 000 of horsepower. Arktika could easily break ice 5 meters thick and develop the speed up to 18 knots in clean water. The icebreaker corpus was made of a solid steel alloy and strengthened with a special ice belt along its sides. The ship had four decks, two platforms, a foredeck and a five-decked ground for a reconnaissance helicopter landing.

On August 9, the icebreaker under the command of captain Jury Kuchiev, having recharged its reactors and thoroughly prepared, left Murmansk and headed towards northern extremity of the Novaya Zemlya. Minister of the marine sea fleet T.B. Guzhenko supervised over the expedition. More than 200 people took part in the expedition. The scientists’ tasks included not only reaching of North Pole and carrying out of a complex of research and observation. It was important to check the capacity of the new icebreaker which was launched five years before the expedition, its resistance to constant collisions with ice.

Having passed Vilkitsky Strait, Arktika turned to the north in the Laptev Sea along 130th meridian. On August 15 the icebreaker crossed latitude 85° North and entered pre-pole area. Having passed a powerful ice cover of the Central polar pool (up to three meters thick), on August 17, 1977 in 4:00 Moscow time, the ship for the first time in the world in active navigation has reached of the geographical point of North Pole. In 7 days and 8 hours the icebreaker covered 2528 miles.

A century-old dream of seamen and polar researchers of many generations came true. The crew and participants of expedition celebrated the event by a solemn ceremony of raising the National flag of the USSR on a ten-meter steel mast planted in the ice. A metal plate with the USSR State Emblem and the inscription “USSR. 60 years of October, Arktika Atomic Icebreaker, latitude 90°-N, 1977” sank to the ocean bed at the point of North Pole at the depth of about 4000 m.

 

Lit.: Атомный ледокол «Арктика» [Электронный ресурс] // Полярная почта. 2000–2013. URL: http://www.polarpost.ru/articles/Ships/RU_USSR/ARKTIKA/ni_ARKTIKA.html; Боечин И. Путь к «Арктике» // Моделист-Конструктор. 1976. № 2, 3; Каневский З. М. Разбуженная Арктика // Льды и судьбы. М., 1980; То же [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://www.polarpost.ru/Library/Kanevskiy-Ldi_i_sudbi/ldi-06.html; Легенда о ледоколе: это интересно // Арктический СНиП. Вып. № 3 (11). 2002.

 

Based on the Presidential Library’s materials:

Development of the Arctic: [digital collection].